UNC Story Archive Recording with Larry P. Alford: The Story of Us4 items
Date Deposited: 2021-02-24
Collection: UNC Story Archive (70096)
Collection Number: 70096
Finding Aid: https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/70096/
During a remote recording session, Larry Alford (Class of 1973, MSLS class of 1977) describes being a student during this turbulent era and how carefully he had to navigate life as a Gay man on campus and in North Carolina generally. Alford explains how he and other Gay men maintained a “firewall…between your Gay life…and, in my case, my straight... Read more
During a remote recording session, Larry Alford (Class of 1973, MSLS class of 1977) describes being a student during this turbulent era and how carefully he had to navigate life as a Gay man on campus and in North Carolina generally. Alford explains how he and other Gay men maintained a “firewall…between your Gay life…and, in my case, my straight friends” for their safety and that finding a community of Gay men had to be done “very, very secretive[ly]”. His career as a librarian began as a student worker in 1970 and, while later working as the head of the Circulation Department, Alford recalls the University librarian coming in “to sort of warn me [about being Gay] by actually talking about another person who was an unmarried male in the department”. It was during this time that Alford read about “five or six people, Gay men, who had some sort of rare cancer, and it was being called the "Gay cancer"; many of the Gay men he met at UNC lost their lives to AIDS. Alford shared that, although “there are negative experiences”, he would not change a thing about himself and found that, like Armistead Maupin's Tales from the City, being Gay was “the very joy of his life and it was fundamental to who he was”.Read less